Elected officials are on edge and clamoring for enhanced safety measures for themselves and their families after the shooting of Charlie Kirk. But even before Kirk’s death, Senate appropriators green-lit funding to continue a pilot program for increased security for lawmakers at home, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee said Thursday.
“The bill that we passed would provide for a pilot program,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters Thursday.
The funding for the pilot program flows through the Senate Sergeant at Arms accounts, which fund Senate-specific security programs separate from the Capitol Police, sparing lawmakers’ office accounts from the burden of large security costs.
The Sergeant at Arms was given an allocation in the legislative branch appropriators bill the Senate approved in July, but as with many security related accounts, itemized details are not made public.
Collins cautioned the measure is now headed to bicameral negotiations, where the funding levels could change and entire policies could get stripped. The inclusion of this money to begin with, however, reflects the extent to which the specter of political violence has become a bleak reality for elected officials.
For years, lawmakers have raised concerns that they are unprotected when they are outside the highly securitized Capitol campus in Washington, even when conducting official duties back home. Their fears became more pronounced after the shooting of state legislators in Minnesota in June, and have metastasized following the targeted killing of Kirk, a prominent conservative activist, at an event on a Utah college campus Wednesday.
But members of both parties and chambers signaled Thursday there’s an appetite for spending money on more security options for lawmakers.
“I think there would be agreement on doing whatever needs to get done for members’ security,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a brief interview Thursday morning.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee, said Thursday that the pilot program has already been operating on a small scale for “several members” with “higher threat levels” participating so far. The hope is that Congress will approve a final version of the Senate-passed legislative branch bill that includes the ability to continue the pilot program through the end of the next fiscal year.
Mullin said appropriators are hoping to soon learn “the actual cost” of providing senators with in-state security, plus get information about the necessary size of a member’s security detail and how visible each detail would have to be.
Noting he has received an uptick in questions from concerned colleagues and spouses about funding for enhanced security in the wake of Kirk’s death, Mullins was candid.
“Ultimately, every member needs to be protected,” he told reporters. “Unfortunately, most people think that we have security on us already. Truth is, we don’t.”
And, he added: “It takes money.”
The cost of outfitting every lawmaker in the House and Senate with an around-the-clock Capitol Police detail — a privilege typically only afforded to members of congressional leadership — would likely run into the multi-billions of dollars. It is a price Congress isn’t likely to be willing to pay. Many rank and file lawmakers outside the line of presidential succession also aren’t interested in giving up their freedom to that degree.
In addition to funding for the Sergeant at Arms pilot program, the Senate-passed legislative branch bill provides $25 million for the Capitol Police’s mutual aid reimbursement program, which reimburses state and local law enforcement for protective detail coverage for lawmakers when they are in their home states and districts.
In May, outgoing Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger touted over 100 memorandumsof agreement for mutual aid partnerships with state and local police around the country. But according to Capitol Police this week, there was a significant surge in mutual aid agreements finalized in the wake of the Minnesota shootings that killed a state representative and her husband; wounded a state senator and his wife; and revealed a list of other elected officials who might have also been targets.
The Senate’s pilot program seems aligned with an updated security framework the House released in the wake of the Minnesota attacks.
The House, on a short term basis, doubled funding for residential security to $20,000 per member to “allow for a more comprehensive suite of security equipment to be installed at their residences,” according to a memo distributed to lawmakers.
These funds flowed through an ongoing House Sergeant-at-Arms initiative for securitizing lawmakers’ homes, which saved members’ office accounts from the expense.
